How do I use my Shared SSL Certificate?

If you want to protect data that is being sent or received between a web server and an internet browser, it is best to use a SSL certificate to encrypt that specific connection. A shared SSL certificate is a SSL certificate that has been installed on the web hosting server that can be used by any account on that server. Its main limitation is that in order to use it the URL for the web server must be used instead of the customer's specific website URL. This may lead to mistrust of the URL because it will not match the URL of the website that is being secured. The following article describes the shared SSL and how it can be used for your website.

What does a shared SSL look like?

Here is an example of how a SHARED SSL will appear versus a dedicated SSL:

Note that the dedicated SSL uses a specific domain name. Shared SSLs used with Web Hosting Hub will always have the format of secure##.webhostinghub.com/~username in front of the path that you wish to use.

Setting up the Shared SSL URL

The main advantage of using a shared SSL is that it is free and already installed on your web server. To use the shared SSL certificate, you will need to access your account via the temporary URL. Here's an example of the URL based on the a temporary URL from ehub22:

http://ehub22.webhostinghub.com/~username

Note that the "username" in the link above is the Username provided with your Web Hosting Hub account.

To use the secure (SSL) version with your temporary URL, you just need to replace the server name with the word "secure" using the temporary URL and add https to the beginning of the URL. Using the example above, the secure site would be:

With either Shared SSL or Dedicated SSL, anytime you use the SSL (calling over https) you will want to make sure that all absolute URLS referenced in that page use https as well. Any calls to http elements inside an https page will "break" the SSL and cause an error.

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